


Rescue Recursive

by jenna_thorn



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: BAMF!Pepper, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-11-27 19:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenna_thorn/pseuds/jenna_thorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Tony's tower, but it's Pepper's, too.<br/>A series of Pepper-centric scenes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Louboutin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, backwards and in high heels.

“Tony, what the hell?”

“Hey, you’re back!”

“Should I have kept my own place in order to keep my closet safe?”

“What? No, Barton hit Steve with the Ginger Rogers quote –“

“Take them off.”

“So I was just…how do you walk in these, I mean, I’m not an ungraceful man, I can take a little turn on the catwalk, but these things are --”

“Take them _off_ , Tony.”

“Are you freaking out about this? This? You are. This is what’s freaking you out, because honestly, the thing in Paris was --”

“That wasn’t _my_ corset you were wearing.”

“You’d rather I wear someone else’s shoes?”

“Take. My. Shoes. Off. Tony.”

“And the incident with the butt plug was much –“

“Give me those.”

He stood barefoot while she clutched the shoes to her chest and glared at him. After a moment, he smiled. “You didn’t mind when I wore your panties.”

“You don’t stretch out my undies.”

“So if I bought my own…?”

“You’d need a half size larger, at least.”


	2. In Memorium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are gathered to remember and reflect ...

She tuned out the droning speaker with ease borne of far too much practice. Tony, beside her, shifted again, and she reached into her pocket and handed him back his phone. He leaned his head against her shoulder and she kept her hand on his wrist, relishing the feeling not of his pulse, but the shifting of the tendons as his fingers flew over the touchscreen. She rubbed at the line on his wrist, mostly healed, just a white and dark brown line on new skin, shiny against the rest. 

She glanced to the left, the emotionless faces of the agents surrounding them. She’d been taken in by the deception he practiced on all of them. She remembered Coulson crossing his arms and squinting after planting explosives at the LA lab floor. Just a little unassuming man, uncomplaining as she’d rescheduled him again and again, who in that moment had stepped into chaos and pulled her by the hand out of bullets and fire and Obie’s insanity.

“I miss Phil,” she whispered to Tony’s lapel.

“Isn’t that the point of a funeral?” Tony answered. “Or service, really, since this …”

“Shhh…” she said, and leaned into him as the people around them went still rather than openly glancing at them. Spies and secret agents, all.

“You started it,” he said, but sat up straight, the very picture of attention. His thumbs still moved in his lap. 

She had trusted Phil, had made time for his meetings, even as they went from brief and on topic to including coffee and sometimes even off site, once when she was touring a new manufacturing floor and he’d popped up at the hotel, smiling, with a briefcase that required a thumbprint to open and a claim of being in the neighborhood. Jalan Duta had neighborhoods, as well as manufacturing space and workers.

She wondered if there really was a cellist in Portland. 

The speaker droned on and duty and sacrifice and she narrowed her eyes thinking of a business card with a name and a logo and a cell phone in blue ink on the back and Tony twitched, beside her. She glanced to the left. Natalie still stood against the wall, though her partner, the archer whose name Pepper had missed, wasn’t. Maybe he was just invisible, like Phil had been. Or in the shadows, like the Bond movies never showed. No, she reminded herself. He was a sniper -- out of sight but certainly present, and useless if he was actually seen. For a moment, she could feel her own heartbeat.

Tony leaned in to whisper in her ear. “I have news you might like. It pisses me off, personally, but you’ll…”

“Tony, ssh,” she said, and held his wrist again, this time encircling it, as though to hold him back. “Don’t say anything.” He blinked. She continued, “Not here. This service is for all of them.”

“You figured it out.”

“Ssh.” She let go his wrist to raise her finger to her lips.

He leaned to whisper into her hair. “You are fucking brilliant and the best thing to come into my life and I’m never going to let you go.”

She nodded, the church pew hard against her back. There were layers in his statement that were worrisome if teased apart. She’d do that later, or preferably not at all.


	3. Moving Daze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tony, why is there a hole in the floor? No. Two. There are two holes in the middle of the floor.”
> 
> He said with a straight face, “Goldfish pond. Koi. Stress relief.”
> 
> And that’s how she was introduced to the first of Tony’s Lost Boys, Dr. Bruce Banner, as he collapsed into laughter that she recognized as semi-hysterical, leaning against the wall, as Tony promised to feed him and brush him and take him for walks.

As unpredictable as Tony may have seemed to an outsider, he did have patterns, so Pepper was entirely unsurprised when he was unavailable when the agents showed up. He started building floors for each of his new teammates as the dust still hung in the air from Loki’s defeat and yet, he was too busy to greet his guests. New housemates. Boy band. Something. 

“Hello, I’m Pepper Potts. I’m very happy that you chose to take Tony up on his offer.” 

The man blinked at her and shrugged the strap of his duffel higher onto his shoulder. “Doing what I’m told.”

“We can schedule a moving van for your furniture, if you like.” 

He glanced around. “Yeah, that’s not actually going to be a problem.” He hunched almost defensively, and she wondered what landmine she’d tripped over, but his voice was even as he said, “Most of my tac stuff stays at HQ anyway. “

She glanced at her tablet, pulling the blueprint for Hawkeye’s rooms. That’s ridiculous, she couldn’t call a grown man Hawkeye. The living quarters had a state of the art bath, a cutting edge entertainment center and no seating. She made a note, sent an email to the firm, and sighed. Twelve percent divided by six. “Let’s show you to your quarters, Agent Barton. We’re still furnishing, so as to work around what you wanted to bring, but we can fill in any gaps.” 

\--::-- 

Banner was the easiest, if only because he was there when she’d gotten back, fidgeting in the elevator before throwing herself at Tony, heedless of the stranger standing in the room. Tony’d patted her hair and suffered her rough examination for injuries and said, “Wait, wait, don’t go.”

She had murmured, “God, Tony, I just got here. The world can move around us for a day” into his hair, then realized that he had one arm around her waist and the other outstretched. She looked up to see someone, someone she didn’t recognize but with a general unkempt air she knew far too well, shuffling toward the elevator. 

“Bruce, wait!” Tony called, then pulled her around and cradled her face in his hands. “Pepper, please, he followed me home, can I keep him? I was thinking, the others, too, but they didn’t come home with me, they went back to Fury, but I’ve decided he doesn’t take good care of his things and I could do better. I could. We could. We’ve got room, the plans have space for redesign and you’re right, we’ve got ---“

“Tony, why is there a hole in the floor? No. Two. There are two holes in the middle of the floor.”

He said with a straight face, “Goldfish pond. Koi. Stress relief.”

And that’s how she was introduced to the first of Tony’s Lost Boys, Dr. Bruce Banner, as he collapsed into laughter that she recognized as semi-hysterical, sagging against the wall, while Tony promised to feed him and brush him and take him for walks.

Five hours later, after exposure to so _much_ information that JARVIS had recorded and would never be made available to the public, she walked to Bruce, leaned close, and whispered “Thank you” into his silver speckled curls. He stiffened, then put one arm around her in the briefest of hugs. “You’ll stay here, with us?” she said, and he nodded.

\--::--

For Coulson, bedrest must translate to spending every moment answering email, because her question was answered almost immediately despite it technically being tomorrow at this point in the night. Her phone glowed in the semi dark enough to let her walk to the big bay windows. Jetlag or insomnia brought her here. She let her forehead rest against the glass, realizing she stood here far too often to be called normal. Or even healthy. On the other hand, at least it was home and not an office or bed in a medical ward. She re-read the note. “Quarters on the helicarrier? How is a dresser and a bunk bed a home?” 

Rogers’ voice came from what she thought was an empty room. “You get used to it after a while.”

She turned so fast she tipped up against the glass, and she rubbed at the twist in her hip in irritation. “We have lights. I’m pretty sure you have a bed.” Her anger surprised even herself and she counted back the hours since she’d slept. Or eaten. 

“I’m sorry, miss. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“How could you possibly not? it’s two in the morning, no, oh look, it’s three, and … _Hell_ ,” she spat out and now that she was looking for him, she could see him, the white-blue edge of a shadowed shirt as he flinched. Her flare of anger faded. “Don’t mind me. I’m losing my mind. ”

“If my bunking in causes a problem, I can … ”

“No…god…no, you’re not the problem. I’m the problem, somehow. I’m the one in control, and this... .” She waved at the room, the city, the whole world. "... is out of control, therefore, it’s my fault.”

“I doubt that, ma’am. Seems to me that we bring a certain … chaos.” He sounded tired, or maybe just resigned. 

“Why are you awake at this time?” she asked, because it seemed better than asking him why he was in _her_ jetlag space, lurking in the shadows.

He shrugged, the barest visible movement. “I’ve slept an awful lot, lately.”

“Right. Because you’re …” Superheroes, no matter what CNN insisted, _wasn’t right_ and the man in front of her may have been a super soldier but he was still a kid, his hands in front of him, like he expected to be reprimanded. She sighed. “Awake now.”

“Yes, ma’am.” There was no doubt to it, he sounded sad. She turned to the window again and could see his reflection as he moved toward the glass, shying away from her. From six feet apart, they stared at the ceaseless movement of lights, floors below. Quietly he asked, “So why is the whole world your problem?”

She bit back the answer that jumped to her tongue, then said it anyway. “Because Tony Stark is my whole world. And right now, he is insane.”

“So you’re running the asylum?”

“No, he is. I’m just running to keep up.”

\--::--

The benefit of a home office, she thought, was not wearing shoes, and she hopped up with intent to rifle the tea cabinet. The disadvantage, however, of a home office, was running into Tony’s new friends on the way to said tea.

“Agent Romanov.”

“Miss Potts.”

“Are we really going to do this, Natalie?”

The other woman gestured at herself and Pepper was suddenly acutely aware of her yoga pants and cashmere wrap sweater in the face of a scifi GI Jane in front of her. “I’m not Natalie. I’m Natasha.”

Pepper crossed her arms. “In the interests of brutal honesty, I liked Natalie. Well, at the beginning. And some at the end.”

“Natalie liked you.”

“I’m sure I’ll like Natasha,” Pepper said, as she pasted on her brightest smile. Natasha didn’t, and Pepper knew they could both hear the doubt. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“I’ve got test results for Stark.”

“He’s in Lab 3. JARVIS, would you please?” The light down the hall flickered and brightened and Natasha turned to follow. Pepper called out, “I was serious about the tea, though.” Maybe Natasha hesitated in acknowledgment; maybe she was imagining her pause. 

 

\--::--

Natasha sat on the couch in the great room, feet curled under her, knitting. Something in the normality of it made Pepper angry. “So how does that work?” Like a visual effect in some summer blockbuster, the woman in front of her shifted. The needles in her hands stayed still, but the little things that were different, the way she held her head or curled her feet, shimmered between the woman in the catsuit with blood on her face after the Expo and Natalie, who wore floral perfume and her hair in waves. “How do you do that?”

Natasha cocked her head, the very picture of polite confusion. Pepper wondered if she practiced it in a mirror. “We talked about knitting on the plane back from DC.”

“No, Natalie talked about knitting. How her aunt taught her macramé and crochet and knitting. Is it true? Did your aunt teach you?”

“No.” Suddenly there in her living room was the secret agent with bloody hands, not Natalie at all, tucking away a palm-sized ball of yarn and thin needles into a bag and rising to her feet. “Nor did my uncle.” She walked out of the common room.

Barton came through the door behind Pepper, a bowl of popcorn in one hand and two bottles of beer in the other. He grinned and said, “Hey, I didn’t know you were joining us. I’ll go fetch another beer.”

“I don’t think she’ll be drinking hers.” She sat down on the couch, on the far corner, still cool, and he handed her one bottle.

He took a swig of his, then waved the bowl of popcorn. “Should I leave?”

“I don’t know?”

“Heh, you’re the only one with any kind of organization in this place.” She felt the frown between her eyebrows, and he put the bowl of popcorn on the couch beside her and sat on the table to face her. “Stark’s all over everything, all the time, and Banner's a ghost. Rogers is spending his days at the library because he googled himself and now he’s only using hard copy for anything, and we’re floating until Coulson’s cleared for field, so if you don’t know what’s up, we’re all screwed.” He saluted her with his beer and grinned, and she couldn’t help a return smile, a small one.

“So who was Natasha’s uncle?” she asked.

“Oh shit.” He left his beer on the table as he vaulted over the back of the couch, following Natasha.

Pepper moved the bottle to a coaster. “I rephrase the question. Who are any of you people?” 

\--::--

Pepper slid her suit jacket off and slipped off her heels, toeing them upright in the well of her desk with practiced ease. She opened a blue folder, shaking her head at the neatly arrayed papers stacked within, all with brightly colored plastic tabs at various points up the side of each page. Paperless environment indeed, she thought, and scanned and signed each carefully. Maybe in another ten years. Conference calls were supposed to do away with international business flights, and shared servers eliminated revision copies and yet … and yet. Pepper flipped back to email and sighed. There were now three more emails, stacked one atop the other, all with attachments, all marked revision and it’s a budget people. Numbers don’t change. She opened the most recent, then picked up her phone, keying in an extension from memory. “Bree, why do I have four versions of your final numbers?”

“Howard forgot Singapore.”

“ We’ve had that facility for three years. Are these final?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m absolutely sure they’re final. I’m so sorry.”

“Slides for BoD?”

“On your desk by three.”

“Thank you.”

The door opened silently as Natalie poked her head into Pepper’s office. Not Natalie, Natasha. She needed more sleep. “Do you have lunch plans?” Natasha asked. Pepper glanced at her desk drawer and carefully didn’t sigh, as Natasha said, “No, not a granola bar. You’re free until four and you’ve had pre-packaged food for breakfast already.” Pepper blinked and tried to remember what breakfast had been. Bagel wrapped in plastic from the cafeteria. But how had … She looked up. “No,” Natasha said, “I can’t read your mind. I just worked with you for eight weeks. What’s the last sunlight you saw?”

Pepper blinked, scrolling through her day in reverse. “LaGuardia.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. C’mon, you can spare a couple of hours.” 

“No, I’ve got final numbers coming in at three.”

“Which means that you’ll get one set at 3:15 and a corrected set at 3:30, so save yourself the aggravation and come with me.”

She held her hand out like a mother waiting for a child and Pepper thought for a moment, that she should be angry, but she was trying. With a jolt, she recognized that this was Natasha, trying, too. She slipped on her shoes and stood, but she didn’t take the offered hand. 

\--::--

Pepper sighed at the first bite, dill and vinegar sharp and the sour-sweet of pickled cabbage. She closed her eyes, blocking out the deli around her, popping mustard seeds as she chewed and swallowed. “How did you find this place?”

“It’s New York. Kosher delis are a thing.”

“You found a Filipino deli with a corned beef sandwich that will haunt my dreams.”

“That sounds like a bad thing.”

“It’s not,” Pepper said around her second mouthful.

“Rogers found it, actually. He’s ..” Natasha paused and smiled at the table. “He’s mapping out the neighborhood, I think. Clockwise. The dim sum place from last week is to the south east of the tower.”

“The moon buns?”

“Yep, that one.”

\--::--

That evening, Natasha sat in the same corner of the sofa as before, glanced up with the same politely indifferent nod of greeting as before, and Pepper steeled herself to ignore her completely as she pulled and dismissed email, then resolutely opened the novel her sister had recommended. She reread the page twice before realizing she couldn’t keep the characters straight because she really just didn’t care about any of them and let her eyes rest on the constant motion of Natasha’s hands. 

“Just watching you is soothing. Probably more so than doing it myself. Why all the needles?”

“Only two are in work at any one time. They’re just pointed at both ends so I can go around rather than back and forth.”

“And tiny metal pokey sticks. Is it me, or do they look threatening? Like they could be weapons?”

“Everything can,” Natasha agreed calmly, but she sounded somehow warmer than she had the day before.

Pepper felt a blush come to her cheeks. She’d seen the tapes, read over his shoulder as Tony un-redacted a handful of files before she excused herself to salvage what was left of her faith in humanity. Cooked spaghetti could be a weapon to the kind of people she was now living with. “Okay,” Pepper said and touched the screen to reopen her book. She spent a moment trying to remember if pregnant Claire was the lawyer or the love interest before remembering that Clare Mitchell was the head of the SI patent team who had requested maternity leave and there wasn’t a Claire or a Clare anywhere in this book. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and turned off the tablet by touch.

“You need a hobby,” Natasha said.

“In theory, I read for pleasure.”

“I knit.”

Pepper opened her eyes again. Natasha was looking at the yarn in her hands. Pepper asked, “So how _did_ you learn?”

“Annaliese, in Archives. At SHIELD.”

“That recently? I mean, with the …” Pepper let the sentence drop. 

“Had to teach myself how to cook, as well. Knitting, cooking, tending babies, that was for … for girls who couldn’t do what we could. We were weapons of the Motherland. Picking locks is a valuable skill, baking bread less so. Well, to them.”

“I would think that any skill would be valuable.”

“So does Fury,” Natasha said, but when Pepper wrinkled her nose at being compared to Nick Fury of all people, she continued. “Clint juggles.”

Pepper grinned at the idea, as she was no doubt supposed to, and let the conversation drop.


	4. Non-Denominational Seasonal Holiday Decor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being helpful.

Every business ran on a 24 hour clock but the lobby was as near to empty as it would be for hours. Pepper stared at the second floor of the lobby from the doorway.

“Are we …” a voice came from her shoulder and she didn’t jump, she _didn’t_. She may have twitched. “Heh, sorry about that. I figured you heard me. Echoes in here. Are we waiting for the wall to do something?”

She glanced to the side to see Agent Barton take far too large a bite of a bear claw and chew while staring placidly at the wall. He seemed smaller out of uniform, slighter somehow, as though the SHIELD costume added weight to everything about him. Here, next to her, in a lavender windbreaker with a half-eaten pastry in one hand and a steaming paper cup in the other, he could be anyone. He looked up, politely patient, waiting for her answer.

She nodded at the wall in question, or more precisely, the garland draped from corner to corner, now sagging awkwardly at one side. “The crew put up the holiday décor last night. We contract a single team, so they can’t come back and fix it until they finish with the Shore facility, and that’s going to be hours and…”

“You’re afraid Tony will see it and fix it himself.”

Relief swept through her like cool water. “Oh, you _understand_. I don’t care that it’s crooked, I just…”

“Don’t need repulsor scorching behind the tree. Makes sense. Here, hold this.”

Force of long habit had her taking his coffee cup and bear claw as he took several long strides, pushed off the corner of one wall to rebound against the other, and wedged himself into the corner near the ceiling with nothing more than his fingertips.

She felt her jaw drop. “How did you do that?”

“Without repulsors or other high energy blasts indoors.”

“No, I mean how are you …” she waved her hands, unwilling to use the word levitate.

“Abandonment issues. Apparently, I’m clingy.” He looked down at her and made a face. “Oh, come on, even the shrink laughed at that one. I’m funny. No one believes I’m funny.” He reached for the fallen garland and her heart seized. “There?”

“There what?”

“Potts, seriously. I can’t tell how it looks from the floor from this angle. There?”

“An inch to the right, please.”

“Cool.” He pressed it to the wall and dropped into a roll, feet, shoulder, hip, feet again, popping up like a toy on springs to stride to her and repossess his coffee and pastry. For a moment, he stood next to her, his head tilted, both of them staring at the garland, then he nodded. “Yup, better.” He poked the last of the bear claw into his mouth, wadded the napkin, and launched it into the trashcan behind the guard station across the lobby.

“Thank you very much,” she said, pleased at how calm she sounded, and he grinned, joyous like a kid at unexpected praise, before walking away, throwing a wave over his shoulder and sipping his coffee.


	5. Louboutin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> polite lies and impolite truths

Pepper walked into the kitchen to see Clint drinking coffee from the carafe and Natasha peeling an apple and eating the peel. She stopped, blinked, then took two long steps backward to round the doorway in order to walk in again. Natasha’s face was blank, Clint had one eyebrow up and Pepper shook her head. “Sorry, I just. … It’s two in the morning.”

“Not in Mogadishu,” Nat said, and Clint looked at her sideways.

“Granted,” Pepper said and ran her fingers through her bangs.

“You want coffee?” Clint asked and she eyed the carafe in his hand and he snorted. “I would make a fresh pot for you.”

“No, no thank you. I’m here for the rest of the week. I just …”

“Nightmares or Tokyo time?” Natasha held out one hand and it took Pepper a moment to see past the black double edge to see that there was a slice of apple between the flat of the knife and Natasha’s thumb. It was white, peel-free, and sweet on her tongue as she chewed and swallowed.

“Your boss.”

Clint snickered. “Nightmares, then.”

“He’s just …”

“You know he likes Tony.”

“No, no, I really don’t know that. I know that he triggered an explosive that threw Tony, threw the armor, into the Hudson.”

“He’d do the same with us,” Natasha said.

Clint added, “If we had flying armor that could take the blast.”

“That’s my point. It almost didn’t. I…” Pepper paused and they shared another silent glance, just a flicker and she remembered that these two, the man in front of her who crawled barefoot along the balcony to string Christmas garland thirty feet over the lobby floor and this woman who pulled her, literally on more than one occasion, to lunches filled with sushi and scathing fashion commentary on passerby, were also agents, secret agents, spies and assassins and … they did not need to know that water had been seeping through the cracked helmet, that Tony had been gagging on river water, that he’d shaken in her arms with the ruined faceplate in his hands. She couldn’t share that with these two people who will kill for her, would throw themselves in the line of incoming fire for her.

Clint was tilted forward, concern apparent, as she sighed. “You okay?” he asked.

“Were you really in Mogadishu?”

He glanced to Natasha, who shook her head no.

“Then I’m okay,” Pepper said and left without her glass of water, the lingering taste of apple on her tongue.


	6. Intimidation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepper is 5'9". Fury is 6'2".

“Maribel, my three o’clock?”

“Fury’s passed the lobby, but he isn’t up here yet.”

She fought the urge to rub between her eyes, knowing the mark would still show. She closed them though, and a bit of music floated through her brain, piano. After a moment, she recognized it. Obadiah could never resist a piano and he and Tony had lingered in a hundred cocktail bars after the pianist left as the waitstaff cleaned the room around them. Obie would play and Tony would doodle on damp cocktail napkins. 

Her phone chirped and she had barely time to glance up before her office door opened, filled by looming secret agent and leather coat. He bypassed the chair and stood at the picture window behind her, his hands clasped behind him, staring at the sky.

She ignored him for the entirety of her patience, which was approximately five seconds, give or take a half second. “Are you planning to lurk over my shoulder for the entire discussion?”

“It’s a remarkable view.”

She spun to face him and yes, there he was, standing barely outside personal space, so close he had to look down on her. She uncrossed her legs, shifted her weight and stood slowly enough to allow him to straighten. Five and a half inches was perfect, and she looked him in the eye. 

“I don’t intimidate you?” 

He smiled. She didn’t. “Of course you do. But you see, Director, I’ve been petted by the Hulk, I shared my coffee with an internationally famous sniper this morning, and--“

“Tony’s learned to play nicely.” He turned his back on her, walking to the chair in front of her desk. He didn’t sit, so neither did she.

“That’s because he wants to play with his friends. I, on the other hand, don’t care. I’m perfectly willing to not be a part of your super secret spy club, and I am not Iron Man. I am Stark Industries.”

“And so you think you can tell me to go to hell.” 

“That’s why you are here. If you wanted something I’d be willing to give, Natasha would have brought it home.”

He stared her down. She knew what she could do, drop her eyes, sit down; she’d watched Tony give all those cues time and time again, dragged into Stane’s office, herself an unwilling shadow and witness. Instead, she crossed her arms and waited.

“I’m beginning to see why Coulson has such a crush on you.” He sat, sweeping his ridiculous coat under him. “You’ve got a telecommunications satellite over – “

“No.”

He reached into his coat. “Written request.”

“Is there a check box for denied?”

He glanced at the papers in his hand and made a show of surprise. “Why look. There is. I am making a formal request to access Stark-controlled technology –“

“And I’m denying it. Subpoena me.” She held out her hand and he rose, handed her a folded over sheet of paper, and walked to the door.

“Always a pleasure, Ms. Potts,” he said with the barest inclination of his head as he pulled open her office door.

She inhaled for a two count, exhaled for three, and scanned the first page, then read both pages completely. Formally denying his request would give StarkSpace deniability should any of the data be diverted, which meant SHIELD needed something on it, which meant she should warn the team of an attempt to access that data. Instead, she gave in to the urge, and rubbed between her eyebrows.


	7. Coverage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's called a safehouse. It wouldn't be needed if the world stayed safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter specifically: Results of graphic violence and civilian reaction thereto.
> 
> I'm serious. Graphic.

She stumbled, stepping over the threshold of the small apartment, and that mis-step, that stagger, moment of clumsiness tipped her over the emotional edge. Her legs gave way, dropping her to the cheap carpeting where she kicked off her pumps and scootched backwards on her ass until she bumped up against something, a wall, maybe, and she shook, staring at the blotchy streaks she’d left between herself and her shoes.

“Are you injured?” Natasha asked, not Natalie, despite the pencil skirt and heels. Natalie had been at her elbow the entire time but this woman, standing at the door, this was Natasha, or perhaps Agent Romanov of SHIELD, and she was looking at Pepper as though waiting for an answer. Oh, the blood. 

“No, it’s not my blood. It’s Peterson’s blood, and Fujikowa’s and …” she gasped.

“You going to throw up?”

“Probably, yes,” Pepper answered.

“Kitchen sink behind you.”

Pepper looked up and the wall at her back was actually a counter. She used the edge to pull herself to her feet, abandoning her shoes in the middle of the floor. Her nylons parted with a tickle like water droplets running down her calf. She peered at her calf. “Oh, I was wrong. I am injured. A scratch. Not…” Not Peterson’s head exploding over her. She leaned over the sink and vomited. Natasha put a hand on her back, then left her to throw up what little remained of a continental breakfast from a continent away and hours ago. A lifetime ago. Two lives. Her sleeves were brown and red, still wet. “Are they both dead?”

“Both?”

“Fujiko --.”

Natasha put up one finger and spoke to the window. “She’s safe, minimally injured. We’re not hopping soon, though. Bring clothes for pickup.” She paused. “Wilco. Channel 4.” She flicked the earpiece, paused again, said, “St. Petersburg,” and flicked the earpiece once more. “Tell him to keep his head down. She’s safer than he is.” 

Pepper turned on the water letting water swirl coffee and bits of bagel down the drain, then scooped water from the running tap to rinse her mouth. Her sleeve clung stickily and she pulled at it, linen and silk and bits of brain matter. Shades of white, suitable for semi tropical weather in summer: ivory, vanilla, bone. The bits of skull weren’t the off white of her suit, though; they were speckled and gritty and she threw up again. She ripped off her jacket and shoved it under the still-running water; no dry cleaner could salvage it and she wanted it off, all of it off, but even then, standing bare armed, her shell was spattered and her skirt looked like she’d rolled in paint. She leaned over the sink as her stomach upended again, then ripped at her skirt, popping free the button at the waistband, feeling the cloth pull free at the seams, and stuffed the whole thing in the sink on top of the wadded jacket, letting the water run over it. Her shell and half slip were stained, but at least she wasn’t smearing other people’s lifeblood against her skin. She closed the tap and leaned over the sink for long seconds, watching the water level sink slowly, blocked by the wad of fabric, leaving a high water mark of gore.

“Finished freaking out yet?” Natasha asked from the doorway.

“No.”

“S’okay, you’ll have the rest of your life.”

“More than they will.”

“My point,” Natasha said, dispassionately. The last of the water ran out with a gurgle and Pepper poked at her ruined suit. “Leave it,” Natasha said. “I’ll biobag it. There’s a shower. I’ll bring you clothes that won’t fit, but they’ll be clean. Take your time.”

The door led to a room with a single twin bed with linens folded on it and a shower stall so small that the spray took the whole of it. She folded her legs under her, sole to one tiled edge and knee against the other, an awkward pile of shinbones and knees and spine, folded in on itself, on herself, and wept.

\--::--

The water ran cold and she twisted off the tap. A towel, rough but clean smelling, waited for her and she wrung as much water out of her hair as she could before stepping into the rest of the apartment, wrapping the towel around her chest. “Just us,” Natasha called from out of her sight. “No need to close the door. Clothes on the bed. Our options were limited.”

Pepper eyed the mens’ briefs, then slid them on. No one was going to see them, and Y fronts weren’t all that different from panties, she supposed. Except that they hung wrong and bunched, even under loose gym pants. Her hair clung to her neck and dripped on the over-sized tee shirt and she twisted it up and out of the way as she walked into the apartment’s other room. Natasha sat on top of the counter, playing with a rifle scope. “Clint says hello. Okay, no he says, ‘Stylin’, Potts’ but that’s undignified at best, so I’m not going to repeat it. If you want to, you can face the window and lift your shirt.”

Pepper paled and stepped back into the doorway, but Natasha wasn’t looking at her as she continued, “No, she might, and then you’d have to explain to Stark in full on pissed off possessive mode how you caught an eyeful of … Of course I’d tell him. Better, I’d tell Rogers. Or I could put in the official report that … Fury, too. Call her yourself.” The phone at her knee rang, and Natasha picked it up and tossed it cross-body to Pepper without looking. “It’s for you.”

She glanced down. It was an older model, playing a default ring tone, and she didn’t recognize the number displayed on the screen. Honestly, she didn’t even recognize the area code. She pressed the green button and asked, “Hello?”

“She lies. Please don’t flash me.”

“Agent Barton?”

He said, “Tony being pissed at me might be funny, but Rogers makes this face, and I can’t take it. How are you doing?”

“Where are you?”

“I’d wave but you can’t see me anyway. Sorry about the prison-like fashion statement, by the way. I wanted to get you an Iron Man T shirt, but we were stuck with what was in local caches.”

“They’re clean. I appreciate the thought.”

“How’s the calf?” he asked.

“It, um, it quit bleeding while I was in the shower.”

“Let Tasha look at it anyway, okay? Concrete chunks have crap on them and infections su … are preventable.” Barton hung up abruptly and Pepper glanced at the phone. When would this become commonplace, cellphones without sim cards and stockpiles of clothing and were they really called safe houses? In the parlance, the lingo? She could probably ask, but decided she didn’t want to know. She crossed the three steps to the counter where Natasha sat. “Can I call my office?” 

“Not yet. Give us an hour or so.” 

“They need to know I’m alive.”

“They do. Stark Industries’ official statement is that you’ve left the scene, are in a protected space, and will make a formal statement yourself at some point in the next twenty-four hours.”

The HKSE closed in four hours, she thought. “Why so long?”

“Either we track back the attack now or we use you as bait.” She glanced up. “If you need to throw up again, I can move.”

“No, no, I’m … you’re right. Better me than Tony.” Pepper took a deep breath, then another. Somehow the oxygen wasn’t making it to her brain, and she felt dizzy.

“He’d argue with you.”

“He’d argue with a brick wall.” The response came to her lips with the ease of familiarity.

Natasha glanced at the window. “Besides, you may not be the actual target.”

“You think it was Peterson?”

“Lee.”

A chill went down Pepper’s spine. “Lee was shot, too?”

“Let’s have a look at that leg.” Natasha pulled a white and yellow tube of some sort from the first aid kit and uncapped it.

Pepper put her foot up on the chair seat and yanked up her pants leg. Her calf was slowly oozing blood again. “Please tell me you have protection on Lee. She’s doing groundbreaking work.”

“We have a team on Lee. And on Sonnier.” Natasha wrapped Pepper’s calf and tucked the ointment back into the kit.

“But you don’t have your best team on either of them, because you and Barton are both watching me.”

“Sitwell’s got Sonnier, with Marsh. They’re good.”

“Better than you?” She gestured at the window. “Than him? No, so I’m the primary target.” She could feel her heart start to race again. “I’m not the most valuable, so I’m the most vulnerable.”

Natasha laughed, not with Natalie’s throaty sex-charged chuckle, but something sharp, with unpleasant edges, and moved so quickly that Pepper couldn’t react, couldn’t even flinch. She stood still as Natasha snaked one hand around her neck, pushing her wet hair into her jaw and kissed her, feather light, on the cheek. She shivered as Natasha whispered into her ear. “Sitwell is good enough to protect a Nobel-winning groundbreaking physicist. Martinez is good enough for a geneticist who may unravel the secret of cancer’s unbridled growth, but you, Pepper Potts,” her voice roughened to something more appropriate to the bedroom, “You get us.” She let go and stepped away. “You can blame Tony. I like to do that, especially when something’s not his fault. You can credit SHIELD’s relationship with Stark Industries. Blaming Clint’s fun, too, and technically valid for everything I’ve been involved in for years now. Or Rogers’ face, the one he makes when he catches anyone drinking out of the carton.” She tilted her head. “Or, yes, thank you, when someone swears on comms. Honestly, I didn’t know he spoke Arabic.”

Pepper sat in the chair she’d been balanced on and ran her fingers through her hair. “Well, we shouldn’t be surprised he has a gifted tongue.” She paused and was rewarded by the barest movement of Natasha’s profile. “I suppose we could call him a cunning linguist.”

Natasha laughed again, then said to the air, “No, I’ll repeat it in a second, hold,” and she leaned in to kiss the top of Pepper’s head. “And that’s why you’ve got us.”

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters re-ordered and the whole marked as complete 15 March 2013. Thank you for your patience.
> 
> With gratitude to Beadslut for beta.


End file.
